Return from DSC

[Fay]

I arrived at Headcorn too early. There were about 30 hippies still around, cleaning up the field, the debris from last week. There were old vans coming & going & dwellings in both fields.

I sat there quite a while, but knew that I would not have left my car & telescopes etc in the field during the night, although they were probably all very trustworthy, but I was a bit concerned when they individually started spending quite a time, about half an hour, treading the mud ridges down that all the transport over the weekend had made. Then one chap went & layed in the middle of the bonfire. It was quite ritualistic & I wondered what they were on.

I had been there quite a while, not sure how many of the club were going to turn up, Mike was on his way, but as I was not going to leave all the gear in the field anyway, I decided to go home.

Very sad but perhaps better luck in August.

Fay

[Mike]

Fay,

Shame you didn't wait. We found a campsite 10 mins away that was excellent and had a great weekend. Clear skies all of Saturday night till it started to get light.

[JohnP]

Hi Mike,

So I'm hoping some imaging was done... Can't wait to see the posts on the forum...

Unfortunately, I got delayed with my son's football presentation night so by the time it was all finished it was about 11.30pm... I felt too tired to drive down at that time plus I had to be up at 7.30am for yet more football...!

I did manage to do a bit of imaging from my back garden on Fri night (it was clear in Bromley) but haven't got round to processing yet.. Tried my first LRGB on M57....

Cheers,  John

[Fay]

Mike,

I told Penny I was going, never thought you would find another field, but I have not got a tent.
I am sick as a parrot about the whole thing as I have so much to learn. Setup in the garden, last night, & got really pathetic images of Jupiter & M57. The images were very light with plenty of mottling. Am doing something wrong, not focusing properly? Wrong settings on K3ccd?
Frustrating when it takes so long to set up.

I could not come back as we were going to Cambridge Sunday morning, but I have been looking forward to the weekends as I have so much to learn.  Ken & friends had gone to the field & said there were naked women running around, so telescopes might not have gone down too well!!!!

I am off to get a car battery, tomorrow, also my card will not go into my Nikon, all of a sudden, it gets stuck, so off the a camera shop as well.

Can't wait for the next imaging night but hope I can improve a bit by then, but need a good bit of coaching, I think.

[Rocket Pooch]

Hi,

Yes it was a shame about Penny's field, but personally the very nice showers and also the quality of the field was a real eye opener.  The campsite was good and when everyone went to bed at 11pm all the lights went out and the sky was actually better than Penny's field because Maidstone was further away.  

Bit technical this, but my camera noise readout is 200 adu's the sky background at the campsite at 1am was 245 adu's or 45 adu's for the actual sky, this is compared to 2,300 adu's for my back garden and 723 for Penny's field.  In other words the sky was very very black (the bigger number is worse) and with a half moon I could still do RGB images.

So from my point of view I'm quite happy with where we were, and oh boy the showers we're nice.  Just a shame we have had a couple of weeks of problems

See you soon.

[Fay]

It sounds like the camp was nice. Perhaps it could be the new venue, in the future. In which case I will have to get some camping equipment.
I would still not have been able to stay, Friday, because of a total lack of camping gear & so I had arranged a room with Penny. Also it never occurred to me that you would find another field, I thought you would all come to Penny's & then go home.

Glad you all had a good time, you deserved it.


Fay

[Whitters]

I was still struggling with my imaging equiptment, and the guy's MADE me buy another telescope when they dragged me down to Telescope house, so I was doing visual stuff, my only comment was that the street lamps around the cabins and the lights on the shower block did detract and give a little nuscence for visual observing.

The campsite was good, and more luxurious, however I thought it missed something, the sound of air rifels and exploding bean tins.

I think that we should use this campsite for a darker version of Mike's imaging sessions, maybe one session in 3 we could have a night at the camp site, what do you think Mike? However I do enjoy the freedom we have at Penny's field. I think that DSC has become more than just observing it has also built friendships in the society. It also gives us a great oppotunity to be big kids.

[JohnP]

Another telescope..... What's that then...? So did you or Mike grab any images?

Cheers,  John

[Whitters]

It was a bargin ED80, Telescope house were selling them cheap, One ieft I think. Chris and Mike held me down while the salesman wafted tew telescope at me. It was a terrible sight to behold.
I didn't get any images, Too busy playing with new scope.
Mike took a few, but I think Chris ot the cream of the crop

[JohnP]

Nice one - That's 4 ED80's in the society now (I think...) Maybe we could hook them together somehow to make a 'Quad Viewer' & get a 4-dimensional view of the universe.... Good luck with the scope anyway.

Cheers,  John

[Mike]

I did get 2 x 20min exposures of M27 but the stars were egg shaped due to dew on my guidescope. I was plagued with dew all night and gave up in the end. I had the heaters on full and it still took over an hour for the dew to burn off. Later in the session after turning the heaters down the dew returned. The laptop was soaked (I must try and think of a solution to that as the screen went funny once as dew obviously got inside).

I can post up a processed image but it isn't going to be very good.

I personally liked the camp site. Sure we couldn't do archery or blow things up but the skies were noticably darker than at Penny's Field. I think we should seriously consider it as a new venue with maybe the Winter one at Penny's, especially as they cannot be relied upon to provide us with a proper venue anyway.

[JohnP]

It would be good to see a 20 min exposure...... Thks

[Rick]

Please can I pinch bits from this conversation to put together a report for the website? I'll leave them un-attributed if you like...